The London Conference and Beyond: Negotiating Burmese Independence

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The London Conference and Beyond: Negotiating

Burmese Independence

Lauriane Simony

To cite this version:

Lauriane Simony. The London Conference and Beyond: Negotiating Burmese Independence. Human-ities and Social Sciences. 2013. �dumas-02184580�

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THE LONDON CONFERENCE AND BEYOND:

NEGOTIATING BURMESE INDEPENDENCE

Lauriane Simony

M1 Etudes Anglophones – ENS de Lyon

May 2013

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INTRODUCTION

“In all these matters, it is the desire and intention of His Majesty’s Government to hasten forward the time when Burma shall realize her independence, either within or without the Commonwealth, but for the sake of the Burmese people it is of the utmost importance that this should be an orderly – though rapid – progress. It is because of their anxiety that they should be in a position to continue to help the people of Burma in that progress that His Majesty’s Government have invited the Burmese leaders to come here for discussions.” Clement Attlee “Statement by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons”, December 20, 1946 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 431, pp. 2343-5

On the 9th of January 1947, a Burmese Delegation led by Aung San, the Deputy Chairman of the Executive Council of Burma, arrived in London and was met by Prime Minister Clement Attlee along with other members of the British government. From the 13th to the 27th of January, a series of meetings (which came to be known as the London Talks or the London Conference) was held in the Council Room at the India and Burma Office, with the purpose of negotiating the terms of Burmese independence. For the first time, the leaders of the two countries were gathered. The Burmese Delegation was mostly composed of members of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, the main political party at the time: it included AFPFL’s President Aung San, Tin Tut, Ba Pe and Thakin Mya, along with former Prime Minister U1 Saw and the Socialist Leader Ba Sein. The AFPFL was formed in August 1944 during the Japanese occupation, and was first known as the Anti-Fascist Organisation: it brought together the Communist Party of Burma, the People’s Revolutionary Party led by future Prime Minister U Nu and the Burma National Army behind Aung San. While its primary purpose was to oust the Japanese from the country, it then engaged in a political struggle against British colonial rule. On the other side, the British negotiators included Prime Minister Clement Attlee, future Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, Secretaries of State for India and Burma Lord Pethick-Lawrence and Lord Listowel and Minister of Defence Albert Victor Alexander. The discussions alternated between ten major sessions

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between the two sides and “private” meetings in which the British and the Burmese met separately to discuss their common line of action. In his introduction to Burma: the Struggle

for Independence, Hugh Tinker emphasizes the unprecedented event that the London

Conference represented: “considering all other urgent problems – domestic and foreign – which were clamouring for the attention of the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues, the amount of time they were prepared to devote to the future of an imperial possession not of the first rank seem[ed] exceptional.”2

In the wake of the Second World War, the British Empire was irreparably weakened: Britain had been defeated on several fronts in Asia between 1940 and 1942 and Burma had been lost to Japan in 1942 and fully recaptured in July 1945. Even though it managed to regain most of the lost territories at the end of the war, its prestige and wealth did not recover. In this context, there was a revival of protest in the Asian colonies which had been mobilised in the war effort. Notably, as soon as the war was over, negotiations for Indian independence started again. In early 1947, Britain officially decided to organise the transfer of power to India and the country became independent in August 1947, a day after its partition with Pakistan: India’s independence initiated the long process of the decolonisation of the British Empire in Asia, with Britain’s last colony, Hong Kong, being handed over to China in 1997. Britain was thus further weakened by the decline of its Empire: it was no longer fit to compete against the two new powers that had emerged from World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union. In the context of the Cold War, another threat worried the British: as the Soviet bloc started growing more and more influential in Asia, the British became aware of the need to counter the rise of Communism by offering their colonies an alternative model of self-government, while preparing their independence.

If the negotiations which took place during the London Talks have often appeared as the final step towards independence, the Burmese struggle for self-government had started long before this. By the end of the Second World War, after the Japanese forces had almost completely withdrawn from the country, Burma’s Governor Sir Dorman-Smith came back to Rangoon with the White Paper which advocated a return to the 1935 Burma Act - the Burmese Constitution which marked the separation of Burma and India. The White Paper program proposed a three-year period of direct rule by Burma’s Governor at the end of which elections would be held and Burma would be able to “attain complete self-government as a

2

Hugh Tinker, Burma, the Struggle for Independence, 1944-48: Documents from Official and Private Sources, vol. 2, ‘From general strike to independence, 31 August 1946 to 4 January 1948’, London, HMSO, 1984, XXI.

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However, the AFPFL had something different in mind: they wanted to preserve the illusory sense of freedom they had tasted under the Japanese occupation and to obtain the right to self-determination for Burma. Upon the formation of an Executive Council, the situation reached a deadlock: Sir Dorman-Smith and the AFPFL did not manage to agree on the terms of the provisional government, and the AFPFL was eventually excluded from any participation in the Executive Council. Moreover, the Governor tried to obtain support from other Burmese politicians, such as Thakin Tun Ok who advocated peace and tranquillity, and to defeat the AFPFL by encouraging the formation of alternative political parties. Yet, far from being weakened, the AFPFL leaders started touring the country and organizing meetings in order to gain mass support. Anxiety grew in the British ranks: Supreme Allied Commander (South-East Asia) Lord Mountbatten had underlined that the British troops stationed on Burmese soil would be insufficient to intervene, should a Burmese armed uprising occur.

In 1946, “the year of Aung San’s most intense struggle against colonial government”4

according to Angelene Naw, the question of self-government became an urgent matter. During the Supreme Council of the AFPFL, from the 16th to the 23rd of May, Aung San announced that he was going to launch a “freedom struggle” and threatened to resort to what he called “extra-legal struggle”, that is to say (according to his own definition) “mass civil disobedience combined with mass non-payment of taxes and mass strikes”,5 if the British government was not prepared to listen to the AFPFL’s demand for complete independence for their country. Sir Dorman-Smith was left with no other choice but to reconsider the policies of the White Paper. His relations with the British Prime Minister deteriorated rapidly as he kept changing policy: on the 7th of May 1946, Clement Attlee sent a telegram to Lord Pethick-Lawrence stating that he should be replaced, as he “had no clear policy” and “ha[d obviously] lost grip”.6

The Governor was eventually dismissed from his position on the 14th of June 1946 as the Burma Office in London deemed he was no longer fit for the job. With the new Governor, new solutions to the unrest going on in Burma were envisaged by the British Government. The situation was tense: when new Governor Rance arrived in Burma in September 1946, he was faced with a major strike in all public services that was immobilising

3

Great Britain, Burma Office, Information Department, Burma – Policy of HMG, Statements of Policy and

Official Speeches, “Return of Civil Government to Burma”, P/V 2250, 1945, 17.

4

Angelene Naw, Aung San and the Struggle for Burmese Independence, Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 2011, X.

5

Ibid., 162.

6

Telegram from Clement Attlee to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (7 May 1946), in Hugh Tinker, Burma, the Struggle

for Independence, 1944-48: Documents from Official and Private Sources, vol. 1, ‘From military occupation to

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the country. The first measure he took was to form a new Executive Council on the 28th of September, in which members of the AFPFL occupied major positions: for instance, U Aung San became the Counsellor for Defence (as well as the Deputy Chairman as previously mentioned), Thakin Mya was in charge of Home and Judicial Affairs and U Tin Tut of Finance and Revenue. Simultaneously, the AFPFL managed to find new sources of support among some British parliamentarians, the most notorious of all being Tom Driberg who was committed to the cause of Burmese independence and repeatedly argued in favour of the AFPFL’s demands in the House,7

“creat[ing] a favourable atmosphere for Aung San’s final negotiations with the British.”8

For the AFPFL, the solution lay in sending a Burmese delegation to London to try and reach an agreement regarding the transfer of power: until the 20th of December 1946, the AFPFL and the government in London were “locked in a battle of wills”9 over the conditions under which this delegation would travel to England. In early 1946, exactly when negotiations for self-government and independence in India were going on, the AFPFL had already made such a request, but it had been ignored on the grounds that the Government was “not prepared to receive deputations from any individual party”.10

In his article “Burma, Britain, and the Commonwealth”, S.R. Ashton points out another reason why they were denied the invitation: as no election had been held in the colony since the end of the Second World War, the British were not entirely sure that the AFPFL was indeed supported by the majority of the Burmese population.11 However, on the 13th of November, a new statement was issued by the AFPFL: the League demanded an official announcement by the British Government, before the 31st of January 1947, that Burma would indeed become independent within a year and that the Executive Council would be recognised as a national government, threatening to resign from the Executive Council should these requests not be met.12 Governor Rance therefore insisted that a delegation from the Executive Council be received in London to discuss the transfer of power. The India and Burma Committee, as well as the Cabinet, agreed to the visit and a formal invitation was sent. Yet, before accepting the invitation, the AFPFL raised a final objection to the way the negotiation process was devised: Aung San and his followers

7

Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions, The Autobiography of Tom Driberg, London, Quartet Books, 1978, 215.

8

Angelene Naw, op. cit., 167.

9

S. R. Ashton, “Burma, Britain, and the Commonwealth, 1946-1956”, The Journal of Imperial and

Commonwealth History, 29:1, 2001, 68.

10

Telegram from the Secretary of State for Burma to the Governor of Burma (2 January 1946), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 1, op. cit., 581.

11

S. R. Ashton, op. cit., 68.

12

Telegram from Sir Hubert Rance to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (13 November 1946), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op.

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demanded that a parliamentary announcement was issued by His Majesty’s Government. On the 20th of December, Prime Minister Clement Attlee made the famous speech in which he reiterated his invitation to the Burmese leaders in order to accelerate the transfer of power and listen to the AFPFL’s suggestions regarding self-government. In the end, the AFPFL Executive Committee accepted the terms of the statement on the 26th of December and answered favourably to the invitation.

According to S.R. Ashton13, three main reasons can be put forward as to why the British eventually agreed to receive a Burmese delegation in London. First, Governor Rance’s influence has to be largely taken into account: he managed to become a genuine mediator between the two sides, paying attention to the AFPFL’s requests while diplomatically trying to get them to listen to reason when they had overstepped the line in the eyes of His Majesty’s Government. Then, militarily speaking, the British could not afford the armed rebellion that a political stalemate was bound to cause, as already mentioned. Finally, economic motives intervened as well: Burma being the largest supplier of rice in the world, it was expected to export about 1.5 million tons of rice over to the other South-East Asian colonies; any disruption in rice exports could have disastrous consequences, as Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin warned.

In his book British Government Policy and Decolonisation, Frank Heinlein shows that the London Conference resulted in a partial transfer of power to Aung San,14 while Hugh Tinker goes further and indicates that he prefers talking about a “capitulation of power” by the British, rather than a regular transfer of power15. Indeed, these meetings marked the setting out of new relations of power between the two countries, as it seems that the British made a lot of concessions to meet the Burmese demands, and were quite unable to offer resistance to their soon-to-be former colony. From this point of view, I have chosen to focus on the specific form which the transfer of power from Britain to Burma took, especially through the examination of the London Conference. In his article “Modern Burma Studies: A Survey of the Field”, Andrew Selth shows that Burma has never been a popular subject of study outside the country.16 It is only since the tragic events of 1988 that Burma has attracted a renewal of interest from foreign scholars. In comparison to other South-East Asian former colonies such

13

S. R. Ashton, art. cit., 69.

14

Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945-1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind,

London, Frank Cass, 2002, 46.

15

Hugh Tinker, “Burma’s Struggle for Independence: The Transfer of Power Thesis Re-Examined”, Modern

Asian Studies, 20:3, 1986, 479.

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as India or Malaya, Burma is underrepresented in studies of decolonisation: before Nicholas Tarling’s important books on Britain and South-East Asia in the context of the decline of the British Empire,17 very few general books on decolonisation included sections on Burma. Though taking place roughly at the same time as Indian decolonisation, Burma’s struggle for independence has been overshadowed by its neighbour’s: the AFPFL’s actions as part of its freedom struggle never had the same mediatised impact worldwide as the events initiated by Gandhi’s Indian Independence Movement (for instance, the Quit India Movement of August 1942 which demanded British withdrawal from India and complete independence represented the largest mass movement ever witnessed by the British). Moreover, India and Pakistan were the first two Asian colonies to obtain their independence from Britain, which could also explain the existence of a much more abundant historiography on India than on Burma.

In this study of the London Talks, I will consider in detail the points on which the leaders of the two countries focused during the negotiations of Burmese independence and will try to establish a balance of the London Conference. Solutions to such major issues as the form the new assembly would take or the diplomatic relations the two countries would observe were brought up during this series of meetings. Other more intricate questions, such as that of the status of ethnic minorities in Burma or that of Burma’s membership in the Commonwealth, were left open, when no agreement was reached between the representatives of the two sides. I will analyse the specificities of the transfer of power from the metropole to the colony in the case of Burma through the examination of the Aung San-Attlee Agreement, to try and show that Burma initiated a new fashion in its rejection of Dominion Status. With mixed results, Burma tried to emerge as a unified democracy, distant from either the British or its Indian neighbour models: as suggested repeatedly by Aung San in the wake of the London Conference, it might have achieved more than its predecessor in a shorter period of time. If I have until now presented the London Talks as an effective confrontation between the metropole and the colony (each having established its precise line of action before the start of the meetings), I will also explore the relations of power at play within the two sides.

Very early on, some officials on the British side committed themselves to the cause of Burma’s independence. I have already evoked the roles of parliamentarians such as Tom Driberg in drawing the Prime Minister’s attention to the Burmese’s claims and officials such as Governor Rance in convincing the government to invite a delegation from the Burmese

17

See Nicholas Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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Executive Council to London, but the influence of Lord Mountbatten in the negotiations is worth mentioning as well. As soon as the Japanese were driven out of the country in August 1945, Lord Mountbatten promised Aung San independence for Burma upon resumption of civil government, in complete opposition to policy-makers in London. If members of the British government gradually recognised the necessity to grant Burma its independence, divisions remained on specific questions and the Conservatives were often dissatisfied with the way negotiations were going between the Labour Party and the AFPFL. On the other hand, the AFPFL being on the front of the Burmese stage - most of its well-known leaders were members of the 1946 Executive Council and the League had the support of a large part of the population – the party sometimes gave the impression that it did not encounter any opposition. In reality, we have to keep in mind that, while the AFPFL included at first many different political groups, it suffered from a split with the Communists on the 2nd of November 1946, when some members of the League entered in negotiations with the British and eventually became part of Rance’s new Executive Council. The Communists, divided between the “Red Flag” Communist Party (which had left the League at the beginning of 1946) and the “White Flag” Communist Party, advocated much more revolutionary methods to obtain self-government. According to Angelene Naw, Aung San’s acceptance of the visit to London led to a weakening of his popularity: he did not manage to get the support of the Communist Party and he was worried that the Communists, along with the PVO (his paramilitary People’s Volunteer Organization formed in December 1945) might take advantage of his compromising attitude towards the British to launch a political struggle18. Moreover, two members of the Burmese delegation sent to London, the Socialist Ba Sein and U Saw, are particularly interesting as they were not members of the AFPFL though they were present at the London Conference (and were much less keen on making compromises with the British): they are often seen as figures of dissent as they disrupted the unity of the delegation, especially through their intervention during the final meeting.

Finally, as already mentioned, the meetings of the London Conference took place on an unprecedented scale, but at the same time were concentrated on a very short period of time: key decisions for Burma’s future were taken quickly in compliance with the AFPFL’s desire to rush through the process of obtaining self-government. The role of India’s decolonisation has to be largely taken into account here, as it seems to have worked as one of the motors for Burma’s independence: far from complying with its label of “minor colony”, the leaders of

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Burma struggled to be acknowledged as India’s equal. In the speeches of the Burmese leaders, constant parallels were drawn between the two territories, and a concession could not be made to India without the Burmese representatives hastening to demand the same rights. Moreover, the rhetoric of the independence movement laid emphasis on the idea of a unified process of decolonisation in South-East Asia, in accordance with Aung San’s desire to “help Asia discover her own destiny and contribute her due share towards the unity and brotherhood of mankind”.19

I will also dwell on the symbolic dimension of the whole process: the role of the two countries’ leaders’ figures, especially Aung San, has to be acknowledged. A whole myth was built around the Bogyoke20 at that time: Aung San genuinely embodied Burma’s struggle for independence both in the eyes of the Burmese and the British and is still today an emblem of the country’s liberation movements.

To examine these questions, I have first largely relied on Hugh Tinker’s gathering of an incredible mass of primary documents both from private and public sources in Burma: The

Struggle for Independence, 1944-1948 as these two volumes are very useful to trace the

precise chronological progress of Burma towards independence. They also provided me with most of the necessary documents (speeches, official statements, newspapers articles and Cabinet reports) in relation to the London Talks. I also consulted several Statements of Policy issued by His Majesty’s Government, and analysed the archives from the Burma Office, available in the Oriental Manuscript section of the British Library in London. The sources on Aung San were plentiful and Angelene Naw’s recent book, Aung San and the Struggle for

Burmese Independence, is notably thorough in its confrontation of the Burmese leader’s life

with the wider historic context of decolonisation. But the difficulty was to distinguish between facts and fiction in biographies, as Aung San’s figure has been surrounded by a series of myths. Josef Silverstein’s The Political Legacy of Aung San is also worth mentioning as it gathers various speeches given by Aung San in the wake of the London Conference. Furthermore, several articles from The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History or

Modern Asian Studies address more contemporary debates on the subject, in particular

reflections on the course of the transfer of power from Great-Britain to its colony or on Burma’s refusal to become a member of the British Commonwealth on obtaining self-government and the consequences of this decision. Finally, articles in the press, though quite

19

This speech was reproduced in the newspaper Dawn from the 6th of January 1947, in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op.

cit., 224.

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difficult to get hold of (especially when it came to Burmese sources, with newspapers such as

Dawn or The Burman), were very useful to provide day-to-day information on the process of

decolonisation in Burma.

I thus chose to analyse three dimensions of the London Talks in this dissertation. The first important step was to reach an agreement on the date of independence, through the establishment of an “Interim Government” with full powers, which the Burmese wanted to be free of any external influence: the position of the Governor was re-defined and essentially reduced to a symbolic one. The first part of this thesis will analyse the conception, formulation and impact of the AFPFL’s Statement of 23 December 1946 which expresses the demands made by the Burmese leaders for the independence negotiations. I will consider to what extent this desire to move rapidly in the direction of self-government was often motivated, on the Burmese part, by India’s progress towards independence, as a response to Attlee’s speech from the 20th

of December 1946 in which the Prime Minister reasserted his pledge that Burma should keep pace with its neighbour. In parallel, this chapter will consider how, on the British side, accelerating the decolonisation process through the meetings in London came as a response to the growing tensions inside the colony and to the pressure exerted by the AFPFL on the British government.

Secondly, this thesis will analyse the genesis of the Constitution of the Burmese state, as defined during the London Talks. The British argued in favour of a Legislative Assembly (from which a Constituent Assembly would emerge) while the Burmese demanded a Constituent Assembly “to go to independence in [their] own way”.21

Delineating a Burmese State came together with the necessary definition of a Burmese identity. During the London Conference, the leaders from the two countries dwelt at length on the question of the ethnic minorities: while the AFPFL, and in particular Aung San, thought that the ethnic minorities in Burma had to be a part of the constitutional process of self-determination, the British deemed that the Frontier People had to remain under their special responsibility. The idea of a unified state had emerged during the Japanese occupation, when Aung San came to realise the importance of the frontier areas inhabitants (he successively met with representatives of the Karen, the Kachin, and at the end of the Second World War, the Shan people); he then devoted the rest of his life to the building of a “Union of Burma”. As the two sides failed to reach an agreement regarding the question of the ethnic minorities in London, I will examine

21

Speech given by Aung San on the 6th of February 1947, in Josef Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung

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the role of the Panglong Conference that closely followed the London Talks in February 1947, in the negotiations for a unified Burma.

I will eventually focus on Burma and Britain’s future relations. The terms of Britain’s future economic relations with Burma had to be defined, as exports of such products as oil and rice were at stake. The financial requests made by Burma had to be discussed as well: the British side was reluctant to grant Burma financial assistance before knowing whether the country intended to stay within the Commonwealth. I will also dwell on the Defence Agreement which emerged from the London Conference. From a strategic point of view, the British leaders’ interest in securing future diplomatic relations with their colony lay in their desire to avoid Burma giving way to “communist subversion”22 – negotiating with the AFPFL thus seemed like a good alternative. In the end, Burma’s decision to complete its independence outside the Commonwealth gave a final blow to the British, as it seemed that the metropole had lost its last remnant of control over its former colony. In the light of the Aung San-Attlee’s Agreement and the colony’s rejection of Dominion Status, this thesis will ultimately reflect on what control, if any, Britain still possessed over Burma at the end of the London meetings.

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CHAPTER I

Accelerating the process: “Independence within a year”

By the end of 1946, at a time when discussions regarding the venue in London for Burmese members from the Executive Council were still going on, the AFPFL issued a series of requests that would have to be examined with the British leaders. The AFPFL Statement of the 23rd of December 1946 is a central text, as it was issued on the eve of the delegation’s journey overseas and sums up in a straightforward manner the goals of the AFPFL in going to London. In this statement, the British were asked to make concessions even before having met with the Burmese representatives. This text was part of the AFPFL’s first attempts to reverse the relations of power between the metropole and its colony, and to assert the dominating position it would try and maintain during the whole of the London Conference. It is important to stress that the British representatives’ room for manoeuvre in the debates was highly limited, not only by the AFPFL’s threats of massive strikes in Burma, but also by the wider context of decolonisation in South-East Asia: the British knew they had to be very careful what they granted Burma if they wanted to avoid repercussions in other Asian colonies. I will here examine two central requests contained in this Statement in detail: the setting up of an Interim Government and the settling of a date for independence, in a common concern to speed up Burma’s progress to self-government. These demands had already been formulated before on multiple occasions, but for the purpose of clarity, I will centre on the last Statement by the AFPFL containing all of the key requests. Finally, the decolonisation of India was of importance as far as the acceleration of granting Burma its freedom is concerned: it conditioned both Burmese and British attitudes towards independence.

1. Preliminary demands: establishing a position of strength

a. The AFPFL’s statement on the 23rd of December 19461

On the 23rd of December 1946, the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League issued their last statement before sending some of their most prominent members to London: it corresponds to the official acceptance of His Majesty’s Government’s invitation. This

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statement also came as an answer to Attlee’s Statement of the 20th of December 19462: “His Majesty’s Government propose to invite a representative group of Burmans from the Governor’s Executive Council to visit their country in the near future for discussions”. The second paragraph contains the AFPFL’s three well-known core demands: the transformation of the Governor’s Executive Council into an Interim Government, elections for a Constituent Assembly and independence within a year (these demands were previously formulated by Aung San during his presidential address at the opening ceremony of the third Supreme Council of the AFPFL and in a statement published in New Times of Burma on the 13th of November 1946). However, the main purpose of the Statement was to clarify certain unsatisfactory points of Attlee’s Statement. First, the Prime Minister had not asserted any clear position regarding independence within a year, but had preferred to remain rather vague on the question: “[the] desire [of His Majesty’s Government] is that the Burmese people should attain their self-government by the quickest and most convenient path possible”. Secondly, as far as the Constituent Assembly was concerned, agreement was yet to be reached between the two sides: His Majesty’s Government wanted to hold intermediary Legislative elections before establishing a Constituent Assembly while the AFPFL requested the suppression of this mediation, as this thesis will show later on. Finally, regarding the Interim Government, if Prime Minister Attlee had agreed that power should be in the hands of the Burmese, he had also announced his desire to maintain the existing Constitution and the current Executive Council, therefore preserving some control over the handling of Burmese internal affairs, through the figure of the Governor. The AFPFL’s programmatic ideas contained in this Statement served one central purpose: complete independence without the participation of any foreign power.

In his book Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, Nicholas Tarling underlines the controversial aspect of the invitation of a Burmese delegation for discussions in London. Indeed, this measure corresponded to the “transfer of practically complete control to a caucus before the political and administrative issues involved ha[d] been satisfactorily cleared, in advance of elections, and in advance of the framing of a new Constitution for Burma”:3

the Burma Delegation was trusted with the fate of the whole country, before elections to ascertain the dominant political party in Burma were held. The British feared in particular the reaction of the Indian leaders regarding this granting of a special favour to their

2

Statement by the Prime Minister to the House of Commons (20 December 1946), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op.

cit., 209.

3

Extract from a memorandum by Acting Inspector-General of Police Chettle for the India and Burma Committee, quoted in Nicholas Tarling, op. cit., 144.

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neighbours. Moreover, each statement issued by the AFPFL since the conditions under which the delegation would travel to London were being discussed contained an additional request: it seems that the League tried to push the boundaries of what they could “reasonably” demand from His Majesty’s Government to see what the British were prepared to grant them, but also to show them they were the ones who had to compromise. In that context of rather peaceful negotiations, Governor Rance advised the British to adopt a conciliatory attitude, or “new and novel methods of embarrassing His Majesty’s Government [would] continue to arise”.4

b. Pressure and threats

In the last paragraph of the Statement, the AFPFL leaders reminded His Majesty’s Government of their intention to resign from the Governor’s Executive Council, if the British side failed to meet Burmese demands by the 31st of January 1947. In other words, in this context of peaceful negotiations, the British Government was in fact under a lot of pressure as failure to compromise would lead to major political unrest in the colony and the end of any hope of negotiations. This “freedom struggle” would be led by U Nu, Aung San’s right-hand man, which was the reason for him not joining the delegation. However, there seemed to be no alternative but to compromise with the AFPFL, as confirmed by deputy under-secretary of state for Burma Sir Laithwaite’s account of his visit to Burma during a Cabinet Meeting on the 8th of January 1947: their nationalist aspirations commanded general support and “in this matter, no other party counted”.5

We have to keep in mind that Sir Dorman-Smith’s attempt at forming another political coalition capable of counterbalancing the AFPFL in 1945 had failed: by backing unpopular political figures such as former Prime Minister U Saw who had been discredited following his dealing with the Japanese in 1941 and Thakin Tun Ok who campaigned for peace, his enterprise failed and he was eventually removed from his position in June 1946. In September 1946, the British had already witnessed the AFPFL’s influence among the Burmese population and within public services: in a couple of weeks only, the whole country had been paralyzed by a major strike of the police, soon imitated by university students, post and telegraphs, railways, government offices and schools. At that time already, the AFPFL had warned the British government that “such situations would keep on coming up unless a national government were at the helm of affairs as sought in August 1945”.6

Moreover, as warned by Governor Rance, this resignation from the Executive Council would

4

Telegram from Sir Hubert Rance to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (13 November 1946), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op.

cit., 140.

5

Ibid., 232.

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come together with the launching of a new general strike and, possibly, recourse to violence. By the beginning of January, at the moment when the London Talks were about to start, there were already signs of this massive campaign of action, or “dress rehearsal for the fight for the Burmese freedom to be staged after 31/1 should conditions warrant it”, in the Governor’s words:7 demonstrations of various sections of the Burmese population (such as veterans’ groups, university students, teachers or other public servants) were organised between the 10th and the 16th of January, dangerously reminding the British of the events that had taken place in September 1946.

In the case of an outbreak of violence in Burma, the British knew their forces would be insufficient to resist: 2000 British troops only were still stationed on Burmese soil. Indian troops could not be used: because of the negotiations for independence, the tense situation in India might require full deployment of those military forces. What’s more, relying on the Burma National Army seemed unsafe and using hill men could have disastrous consequences for the future as it would lead to further division in the country. Nicholas Tarling concludes that “if the AFPFL resigned and provoked trouble or, more likely, stimulated a general strike and set up a parallel government, Britain would find it very difficult to meet the situation”.8 Going through the trouble of holding the country by force for an uncertain number of years while both sides had agreed in principle on Burma’s independence seemed rather pointless and the Cabinet soon settled for the inevitable compromises that were required. Strategic considerations in a wider context of South-East Asian decolonisation were also taken into account: the Colonial Secretary warned the British government that other colonies, such as Ceylon or Malaya, would be likely to be influenced by the unfolding of such events in Burma and might develop the same aspiration at a quick transition to self-government. In his article “Some contrasts between Burma and Malaya”, R. B. Smith highlights the economic interests that the Southern area of Asia represented for the British: their protection depended on the political stability of the British colonies in this region, amongst which Burma.9

Military Intelligence in Rangoon, along with Governor Rance, wrote reports on other threats that might disrupt the tranquillity of the unfolding of the discussions in London. The Communists notably, fearing that a positive outcome of the AFPFL negotiations with the British might have negative consequences on their popularity at home, had made plans to

7

Telegram from Sir Hubert Rance to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (9 January 1947), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op. cit., 245.

8

Nicholas Tarling, op. cit., 147.

9

R. B. Smith, “Some contrasts between Burma and Malaya in British policy in South-East Asia”, in R. B. Smith and A. J. Stockwell (eds.), British Policy and the Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives, London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1987, 69.

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resort to force while the key members of the AFPFL were abroad. Reports indicated that the Red Flag Communists had started gathering arms and would march on Rangoon around the 15th of January: their plan consisted in starting hostilities with Government forces so that, interpreted as the beginning of rebellion in the districts, it would provoke “widespread revolt”.10 This turn of events worried Aung San who was afraid his popularity at home might be weakened by his recent decisions, such as that of negotiating with the British: the Communists in particular, who preferred armed resistance to peaceful discussions, accused him of not being strongly enough opposed to imperialism. He himself was under a lot of pressure, as a failure on his part to obtain concessions from the British would question his leadership and support in the country: before leaving Burma, he asserted that if the negotiations did not go his way, he would leave London immediately to join the freedom movements.

2. A necessary redefinition of the White Paper programme

a. The White Paper programme

When the AFPFL members first agreed on their common line of action, they built their demands in opposition to the White Paper that had been issued by the British Parliament on the 17th of May 1945. This White Paper envisaged a period of three years under the direct rule of the Governor, in compliance with Section 139 of the 1935 Burma Act:11 this period was justified by the need for reconstruction and the recovery of a certain political and economic stability. At the end of those three years, “the normal provisions of the Act […] w[ould] re-enter into force”: elections would be held “and a Legislature formed with the same degree of authority over the same range of matters as it enjoyed before the Japanese invasion”.12 A constitution would then be drafted, providing the basis for Burma’s self-government within the British Commonwealth (Burma would therefore obtain dominion status). Only after this final step would the Burmese be free to secede or set up a republic if that was their desire. According to this program, the Burmese would not attain self-government before five to six

10

Telegram from Sir Hubert Rance to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (9 January 1947), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op. cit., 243.

11

Under this section of the Burmese Constitution, the Governor of Burma could be granted special powers should the internal situation of the country require so.

12

Great Britain, Burma Office, Information Department, Burma – Policy of HMG, Statements of Policy and

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years, as the three-year-period of direct rule was to start after the restoration of civil government only.

The British attachment to the White Paper was a long-standing one. If it was highly supported by Governor Dorman-Smith in 1945, unaware – on his return to the colony – of the new hopes raised by the liberation of the country, its program was not abandoned when the new Governor arrived in Burma in September 1946. Indeed, Rance was told by the metropole to stick with the White Paper plan and the Act of 1935 to form his Executive Council, and to make no reference whatsoever to “independence”, while tensions within the country signaled a need for a change of policy. On the 13th of November 1946, Counsellor to the Governor Raibeart MacDougall produced a Memorandum in which he put forward the different advantages of speeding up the White Paper programme: he reminded the Prime Minister that the principle of independence was already included in this White Paper (upon certain formalities) and that the AFPFL was likely to keep on cooperating with the His Majesty’s Government if the negotiations led to genuine results. Not before his Statement on the 20th of December 1946 did Prime Minister Clement Attlee recognise that the White Paper needed revision: “[the Burmese] leaders have expressed some impatience with the apparently slow development of the White Paper plan. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government think that the plan requires reconsideration”.13

The White Paper, out of date in the eyes of the AFPFL, did not match the rapid unfolding of events in the country anymore.

b. Interim Government

One of the most important demands by the AFPFL was the establishment of an Interim Government with full powers to prepare for independence: they wanted the AFPFL-dominated Executive Council to be recognised as the national government, i.e. they demanded a transfer of power without the organisation of prior elections. In a “General Statement by the Burma Delegation” on the 15th of January, the League requested that the Governor no longer be under the control of the Secretary of State but should follow the advice of his Executive Council: the Interim Government was to be free of any foreign influence.14 Moreover, the fact that Burma’s Governor held too much power had already been acknowledged on multiple occasions. In his Memorandum of the 6th of November 1946, U Tin Tut highlighted that, under the 1935 Constitution, the Governor could act in his discretion

13

cit., 209.

14

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or in his individual judgement (that is to say without consulting his ministers) to take decisions regarding crucial matters such as defence, external affairs, finances or the Frontier Areas, in total contradiction with any idea of self-government: “it is desirable that these functions should now be converted to functions in which the Governor acts on the advice of his Council”.15

Thus, the AFPFL required financial autonomy for the Executive Council and that the Frontier Areas should be placed within the scope of the Council.

During the negotiations, the Burmese obtained most of their demands regarding the question of a National Government. In the Aung San-Attlee Agreement, the Governor’s Executive Council was effectively turned into the Interim Government of Burma. It was built on the model of the dominion government in India: the Executive Council was to work in close relation with the metropole, but was given complete freedom in the running of day-to-day administration. Certain fields, such as Defence and External Affairs, which had previously been under the control of the Governor, were handed down to the Burmese Counsellor in charge (Aung San was in charge of Defence and External Affairs) and would in the future be brought before the Executive Council. Finally, the Burma Army would be placed under the control of the Interim Government. Therefore, as Hugh Tinker shows in “Burma’s Struggle for Independence: The Transfer of Power Thesis Re-Examined”, the London Conference resulted in an effective transfer of power: Aung San was in charge of this new National Government, and the Governor’s presence at meetings was not required anymore, except when his special powers were involved.16

c. The date of independence

Another intricate matter was the timetable of decolonisation, although in the discussions, the date of the British departure from Burma was not given as much importance as the date for the effective declaration of independence. If the Burmese pressed for independence before the end of January 1948, the British deemed this deadline impossible to observe and wanted the process to be spread out. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State for India and Burma, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, recognised that talking the delegation out of this idea was a difficult task, as, in the decolonisation rhetoric, all the AFPFL demands were summed up in “Independence Within a Year”: “great and unwise publicity has been given in Burma to

15

Memorandum by U Tin Tut (6 November 1946), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op. cit., 123.

16

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31st January 1948 as the date by which Burma shall receive her freedom”.17 By establishing a utopian timetable, Lord Pethick-Lawrence tried to underline the impossibility of achieving self-government at such an early date. Indeed, elections were planned for the 2nd of April 1947, which meant that the constitution-making assembly (whose nature still had to be decided) could be formed around the beginning of May. Then, taking into account the time necessary to draft proposals and some time to negotiate the terms of the future Constitution with His Majesty’s Government, the Constitution could not be completed before the very end of 1947. This is why the Secretary of State for Burma put forward the 31st of March 1948 as a more suitable date for Burma’s independence, which was also similar to the date given for India’s transfer of power).

This concern over the date for the independence of Burma was soon left aside in the debates as more pressing matters called for the attention of the two countries’ representatives: at the end of the meetings, the precise date of independence had yet to be agreed upon. According to Aung San, “Independence could be announced two months after the formation of a Constituent Assembly”,18

which represented a much tighter schedule than that foreseen by the Secretary of State. After the elections in April 1947, Aung San put the question of the date of the final transfer of power back on the agenda, reminding Rance and Attlee that his target date was January 1948. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Aung San argued that the freshly elected Constituent Assembly would have completed its work by October 1947, allowing for a transfer of sovereignty in early 1948; he highlighted the positive outcome in public opinion that the proper announcement of the date of independence would produce.19 In the last week of June, another delegation led by Thakin Nu left for London to ensure that the transfer of power would take place in January 1948 as planned. In the end, the so-called Nu-Attlee Agreement for the transfer of power was signed in October 1947 and Burma became a sovereign independent state early in the morning of the 4th of January 1948, following the advice of astrologers: “the independence of Burma was achieved within the time frame Aung San had envisioned”.20

17

Memorandum “By Which Date Can Burma Full Self-Government Be Achieved?” by Secretary of State for India and Burma (10 January 1947), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op. cit., 257.

18

Press Conference “AFPFL demands granted in full” (3 February 1947), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op. cit., 388.

19

Aung San’s Letter to Prime Minister Attlee (13 May 1947), in Angelene Naw, op. cit., 261-263.

20

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3. The influence of India’s struggle for independence

a. Burma and India’s shared History

Burma’s decolonisation process is often analysed in comparison to India’s: indeed, up until 1935 both countries were under the control of a common administration and together formed one unique colony; moreover, the nationalist movements and claims for independence developed more or less at the same time in the two neighbour territories, though in very different ways. In 1897, Burma became a province of British India: it was placed under the authority of the Viceroy and Governor-General of India on the one hand, and that of the Secretary of State for India (the Cabinet minister responsible for India who was also at the head of the India Office in London) on the other hand. The fact that the best positions in Burmese administration were saved for Britons and Indian civil servants while the lowest positions were occupied by Burmese soon fuelled nationalist sentiments. In the early twentieth century, several Burmese Buddhist societies and nationalist associations were formed by Western-educated middle-class Burmese, and later merged into the General Council of Burmese Associations in 1920: those associations became increasingly versed in politics. As a response to the rise of nationalist movements, discussions about the separation of Burma from India began in 1930. The question was first examined at the India Round Table of 1930-31: Burma and Britain representatives soon agreed that Burma would be separated from India. A second meeting, the Burma Round Table, was organised to specify the terms of the separation and of Burma’s administration under the new reform scheme. In late July 1931, Secretary of State for India Benn stated that “all the pledges made to Burma as part of India stand”: the British thus asserted that they were committed to Burma’s constitutional progress and that Burma’s new constitution would not be inferior to India’s.21

In 1935, under the Government of Burma Act (which was fully operational in 1937), Burma was separated from India.

Therefore, from Burma’s separation from India to its independence in 1948, two dynamics were at play regarding its neighbour colony: if the Burmese leaders were largely influenced by the Indian nationalist struggle (as early as the boycott movements engendered by the Gandhi-led Indian National Congress in 1920), they also strove to refute Burma’s position as a “minor colony” and to be recognised as India’s equal by the British Government. According to Stephen Howe, in 1945, when the Labour Party came to power, Clement Attlee expressed his commitment to Indian independence, but he remained rather cautious and vague

21

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regarding the constitutional progress of other colonies.22 It seemed that Burma was only important in an Indian subcontinent context, but not on its own. Even in comparison with other South-East Asian colonies, such as Malaya or Singapore, which were of interest to the British from an economic and strategic point of view, Burma’s demands were often met with indifference. R. B. Smith concludes his article “Some contrasts between Burma and Malaya in British policy in South-East Asia” by saying that “from the British point of view the focal point of the region lay in Malaya and Singapore. Even at the height of its prosperity, as an ‘empire gem’, Burma had never attained that level of importance for Britain”.23

In Burma, resentment and a desire to be a part of the great movements of decolonisation fuelled a long struggle to be heard by the colonial power. Between 1946 and 1948, there was a sudden acceleration of the process of attaining self-government in Burma: Burmese independence came much faster than any other British colony’s, and Burma was the second colony in Asia to obtain its freedom, right after India and Pakistan.

b. Keeping pace with India

On the occasion of his speech in the House of Commons on the 20th of December 1946, Prime Minister Clement Attlee reasserted the 1931 promise that the British Government would help Burma keep in step with India: “His Majesty’s Government further take the view that the pledge of 1931 must be fully carried out”.24 In response, the AFPFL reminded the British Government that this pledge had not been observed and that the Burmese felt somewhat prejudiced against: “although at the time of the separation of Burma from India the British Government made a definite pledge that the separation would not prejudice the constitutional progress of Burma, they have not carried it out, so much so that Burma finds herself left with a much lower status at this moment when India is almost at the goal of freedom”.25

Indeed, as I have already suggested, it seemed that India was an important factor for both the metropole and its colony. At the time, Britain’s room for manoeuvre in Burma was limited by its primary concern over India’s process of decolonisation. The British were constrained by the fact that they could not grant the Burmese nationalists more than they granted their counterparts in India, or they risked facing the rise of difficult demands from

22

Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: the Left and the End of Empire, 1918-1964, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, 82.

23

R. B. Smith, op. cit., 68.

24

cit., 209.

25

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India: “so long as India remained British, Britain could not afford to lose control of Burma”.26

On the contrary, as suggested by R. Ovendale, events in India made it doubly important to give the impression that Britain could reject demands for independence from other possessions because it was recognized that, if India went, Ceylon and Burma would follow rapidly, perhaps within 5 years.27

On the other hand, “there was [...] a long-established pattern of taking decisions about Burma in the light of what had already been done in India”, as R. B. Smith puts it.28

For instance, the idea of inviting a Burmese delegation to London for negotiations was modelled on the invitation of an Indian delegation to Britain a year before. Smith’s chronology puts in perspective the developments in India and Burma:29 in November 1946, Jinnah and Nehru were invited to London for crisis talks. The Indian leaders’ venue was accepted by the Cabinet on the 25th of November while the India and Burma Committee accepted the Burmese delegation’s visit on the 26th

of November. Yet agreement on the part of the Burmese took much longer than agreement by the Indian leaders as the AFPFL pressed for further concessions before eventually accepting the invitation.

If the Burmese leaders relied at times on India’s constitutional advance to demand the same rights, they also tried to erect Burma as a new nation, distant from the Indian model: Aung San often expressed his commitment to the creation in Burma of his own model of government. To the problems that arose in India at that time (especially around the partition of the country in August 1947), Aung San systematically opposed and emphasized the unity of the Burmese population (leaving aside the ethnic minorities issue) and the relative atmosphere of peace inside the country, in order to legitimize the AFPFL claims for self-government: “the danger of civil war so pregnant in India hardly exists in Burma”.30

Moreover, if Aung San sometimes referred to Gandhi’s advocacy of non-violence in India, he also reminded the Burmese that when violence broke out in the country, Gandhi suspended civil disobedience. In that way, the AFPFL was not firmly opposed, as Gandhi was, to resorting to violence if non-violent resistance was deemed insufficient.

After the Aung San-Attlee Agreement was signed on the 27th of January 1947, Aung San gave four speeches to try and answer the severe criticism he was faced with upon his return to Burma, that he had become an enemy sympathiser: what was recurrent in all his

26

R. B. Smith, op. cit., 69.

27

Ritchie Ovendale (ed.), The Foreign Policy of the British Labour Governments, 1945-1951, London, Leicester University Press, 1984, 37.

28

R.B. Smith, op. cit., 64.

29

Ibid., 66.

30

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speeches was the constant comparison with India, and more specifically the fact that Burma was then ahead of India. On the 3rd of February, he declared at the AFPFL headquarters: “as regards the interim government we have achieved an interim government with as much powers as we had desired. It is better than the interim government granted to India”. On the following day, addressing the public via radio, he stated: “No foreigners will be in the elections. Even India has not been able to exclude foreigners”; “To be precise, what we have now received is not less than what India has obtained: what we have received might even be more”.31

Therefore, keeping in step with India not only worked as a motor, but also provided a definite purpose for the AFPFL members’ struggle for independence: they took pride in obtaining the same constitutional rights as India – if not more, as with their eventual decision to become a republic outside the Commonwealth as I will show later on in this dissertation.

The negotiations which took place during the London Conference were marked with efficiency on important matters: the members of the Burma Delegation knew what they wanted to secure in London beforehand and hardly made any concessions of their own regarding the Interim Government and the date of independence. The Governor’s Executive Council was turned into an Interim Government and was placed under Aung San’s control. The Governor’s position was reduced to a mere official one: under the new regime, Rance did not have any influence over the internal administration of the country. Moreover, showing skills and determination in running Burma in 1947, Aung San and his followers succeeded in securing an early date for the effective transfer of sovereignty: Burma became independent on the 4th of January 1948. The entire negotiations fell within a sort of general rush as the AFPFL members needed to live up to the Burmese population’s expectations of achieving “Independence within a year”. The Burmese’s haste conflicted with the Britons’ willingness to slow down the whole process and to observe a timetable similar to that adopted in India: the latter deemed preferable to try and retain Burma as a colony as long as possible. It seemed to be the only secure move regarding India: because its position as Britain’s most important colony conferred it a special status, India could not arrive second in the bid for freedom. Furthermore, the pressure of world opinion did not allow Britain any faux pas. Yet in the end, the Burma Delegation’s pressure was the one that proved most difficult to resist: there were already signs of a potential general revolution in the country in mid-January 1947 and the

31

Two speeches by Aung San quoted in Josef Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San, New York, Cornell University, 1993, 53-59.

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British did not have much choice but to reconsider the terms of the 1945 White Paper and grant the Burmese what they had required. Upon his return to Rangoon, Aung San declared that “Burma was now ahead of India in the bid for freedom” and that “it was up to Burma to see that she maintained this lead”.32 The London Conference represented an important achievement for the Burmese as it enabled the members of the AFPFL to assert themselves as a real organised front and as tough negotiators. Nevertheless, if the discussions for the Interim Government unfolded smoothly enough, the Burmese had to show a further sense of diplomacy in the negotiations regarding the real foundation of their new State. Two issues in particular divided the two sides: the election of a Constituent Assembly and the assimilation of the Frontier Areas with the rest of Burma. But these questions also revealed the absence of consensus within the Burmese population and within the Burma Delegation itself: to achieve Aung San’s dream of a “Union of Burma”, the AFPFL not only needed to convince the British that they embodied the general wish and thus would obtain the majority at the Assembly, but they also had to obtain the general trust of the population, especially that of the ethnic minorities.

32

Telegram from Sir Hubert Rance to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (21 February 1947), in Hugh Tinker, vol. 2, op.

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CHAPTER II

Independence, state and nation: debating Burmese identity

At the opening of the London Conference, the Burma Delegation’s statement read: “We understand [from the Prime Minister’s Statement on the 20th

of December 1946] that His Majesty’s Government are prepared to concede to Burma the right to such form of independence as she may choose”.1

This declaration represented a claim for self-determination: the Burmese wanted to be the sole decision-takers in their achievement of independence. Indeed, after the discussions around the timetable of decolonisation, the second pressing matter was to determine the features of the new Burmese state. I will here examine the two central questions which opened the way for debate. On the one hand, establishing a new state required the drafting of a new Constitution: in that sense, the first step was to reach an agreement on the form the constituent body would take. If the British Government argued for a Legislative Assembly, electing a Constituent Assembly straight away seemed to be the best solution for the Burmese as it would correspond to a significant gain of time. Moreover, as Burma was still in a period of reconstruction after the Japanese invasion, it was necessary for the AFPFL to secure funds during the negotiations. On the other hand, the question of a “Burmese identity” was raised during the London Talks: which status to grant the ethnic minorities living on Burmese soil? How to define a “Burma National”? In opposition to the upcoming partition in India, the Burmese Delegation wanted to find a solution for the Frontier Areas issue and believed they could achieve Aung San’s utopian vision of a “Union of Burma”, that is to say to forge the new nation on an alliance of the Plains and Hills Peoples.

1. The birth of a new State: struggling for self-determination

a. The form of the new State: Constituent Assembly vs. Legislative Assembly

After the agreement on an early date for the transfer of sovereignty and the setting up of an Interim Government, the third core demand formulated by the AFPFL was the election of a Constituent Assembly through universal franchise, free from the participation of aliens. But the British side adamantly rejected this idea: they wanted first to hold elections for a Legislative Assembly, from which a Constituent Assembly composed of Burmese nationals

1

The London Conference and Beyond: Negotiating Burmese Independence

HAL Id: dumas-02184580

https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-02184580

The London Conference and Beyond: Negotiating

Burmese Independence

Lauriane Simony

To cite this version:

THE LONDON CONFERENCE AND BEYOND:

NEGOTIATING BURMESE INDEPENDENCE

Lauriane Simony

M1 Etudes Anglophones – ENS de Lyon

May 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

Accelerating the process: “Independence within a year”

CHAPTER II

Independence, state and nation: debating Burmese identity